Black Mountain Steak & Lake

It read steak on the menu and when it arrived, the plate was half-filled with pommes-frites, circled with cut strawberrys and cucumbers, and the "steak" was meat wrapped in dough, stuffed with some sort of sour cheese, and topped with a sour cream-dill sauce.

Another example of I don't know what it really was, but it was, of course, delicious.

There's a French girl in the same hostel who is at work on a Ph.D in the philosophy of Political Science in the Balkans.  We've had a couple of lengthy talks about the state of affairs.  I'm staying through Sunday here in Podgorica because she's heading down to Lake Skadar (National Park that borders Crna Gora and Albania) and invited me along.  "Some things are more fun with two people, no?" she said.

Who am I to argue with a French girl?



~*~

Not that this is of the deepest thoughts in human history...

For my younger readers, those innocent of mind or ear or ear (should anyone of such nature exist), or my mother (who may be reading this), I will offer the slightest of apologies in advance for the language in this one... but it's something we all do and, undoubtedly, some, if not most, of the greatest thinking in human history has been done whilst perched upon whatever's age held as a version of our own's porcelain throne:  It was while taking a shit at 03:30 in the morning in Lovćen Hotel in Podgorica, having just showered away a nine-hour bus ride (during which one of the Kosovars stole my hat!) out of conscience-forsaken Priština, that it dawned upon me...


I'm in Podgorica, Crna Gora.  How the hell did I get here!?


Prague?  Yeah, ok... we understand that.  Wein?  Absolutely.  Kraków?  Weird, but sure, history and a castle and strange statuary.  Even Kosovo, given it's controversial newborn history.  Ok.  But Podgorica?  Never even heard of it.  Can't pronounce it correctly.

Reason:  Fellow named Jovo.  He is referred to me with highest recommendations from my unseen agent in Beograd.  Unseen agent in Beograd?  Sounds suspeciouly like a horror fantasy spy thiller--Lovercraft meets Graham Greene.  But alas!  my unseen agent in Beograd is not likely to rise (as in my own fiction) out of the Atlantic depths to feast upon the flesh of my fans (whoever they are), and even if she did, I wouldn't recognize her as such because, well, I've never seen her.  But she tells me through another--like a good oracular unseen agent should--that I would do well to speak with Jovo.  In Podgorica.  And Jovo, for his part, will speak to me about my work because, well... I am referred to him with highest recommendations, as well.

Intent: So here I am.  In Podgorica, Montenegro (Crna Gora; Black Mountain).  At, now, 10 past 4 in the morning [at time of hand-writing this].  With highest recommendations.

It's somehow pleasant, secure, and reassuring to know that if the Pod People Anunnaki Replicators got me now after years of careful and close scrutiny, they wouldn't recognize anything at all.  They wouldn't know how to have me behave, let alone know where the hell Podgorica is.



~*~

Crna Gora & Beyond

I'm on a night bus to Podgorica this evening at 17:45.  (Arriving at 02-ish?)  Next week I'm heading on to my beloved Sarajevo, where I have lined up a place for three-and-a-half weeks continuous (allowing me then the option of overnight trips to ... say ... Mostar ... without having to pack up everything to take along).  The pension I've got there is literally meters from the iconic Sebilj in Baščaršija (Old Town).  To pronounce that (I've had to practive, since English doesn't formulate these sort of sounds) try this (the -- indicate more separate syllables than the -): Bash--char--shh-ya.  That's not exactly correct, but it's as close as you'll get without adding the local accents/dialects.

I have a lot more to say about Prishtina and Kosovo, but not now.  There's too many good things before and after this to weigh things down with complaints right now.

On the good side of being here, I found some wonderfully colorful scarves in a shop, and a decent place for coffee.

But it is time to move on from here.

Montenegro promises to be better...



 ~*~

P.S.

Yes, I am aware that my previous post just now violated my non-judgmental goal I set forth.  But That was a pre-judicial attitude.  This is reactionary to what I have personally experienced today.

The exception to prove the rule.



~*~

The US did something very, very, very, very wrong...

Bombing Belgrade in 1999/2000 to set the course for the independence of Kosovo is, in my current experience on the ground here, wrong.  The people and infrastructure and attitudes and arrogant prejudices here is palpable.  There are burned out houses in a lot of neighborhoods that, one one persona proudly told me an hour ago, were the houses where Serbs lived.  They, of course, don't now.  There is abject poverty literally next door to multi-million dollar (euro) houses inhabited by embassy personnel.  Huge piles of garbage build up in vacant lots.  The old stadium seems to be a squatters den, right next door to a string of posh galleries and restaurant cafes.  Men and boys openly hound, cajole, and sexually degrade/objectify women walking down the street, and the women, for their part, seem to be culturally accepting of it.

I think the only comparison to Prishtina and its people would be the Kuwaitis.

And for this, the US cut deals with, and believed the lies of, a group they themselves classified as a terrorist organization: the KLA.  The US bombed the people of Belgrade to give the KLA political rights to declare independence.  An indepence the tax payers of the US and the EU are supporting.  Funds for education buy really pretty signs and build really nice houses for ambassadors, but the schools themselves look horrid (they may be excellently supplied from the inside, but from outside, they are wretched).

The karma of this city began gnawing on me about half-way here from the border.  And I was incredibly excited to arrive.  That excitment, sadly, turned to horror and disgust over the day spent wandering around.

And for all the talk and signs and plaques hanging everywhere reminding all who see that Kosovo is, indeed, an independent nation (under the constant supervision and armed guard of the KFOR), you'd think they could put up some street signs.  Maps are useless (as Prague Spring in `68 could attested to) if the streets are not marked.  I asked a policeman what the name of a major cross-street was.  He didn't know.  He asked a cab driver.  Mr. Cab Driver didn't know.  Mr. Cab Driver asked some locals walking along.  The locals didn't know.

I walked on.

Uphill.

In all directions.

The hills here make Seattle and San Francisco look like the Great Basin.  No exaggeration.


(A girl from the next hostel room over just yelled out, "I wanna be Albanian.  They're soooo cooool!")

So I guess that's the way to close it.  The young wealthy American kid said it all.  And everybody knows that young wealthy American kids are always right.  That's why they wear Che Guevara t-shirts.
 
Maybe leaving Kosovo for Podgorica tomorrow.  Maybe stick it out for another night.  If I find another place to stay.  The adventure that is this dismal hostel is another story altogether.  At least I have a door that locks.  No repeat of the Prague Loki I incident...

 signing off from the newest nation in the world, and the first nation whose flag was designed entirely with unicode colors.

   ~k


~*~

And then the pigeon shat on my head...

So I'm having coffee at this place on Republic Square when I see this lepojka walk past; exquisite in a city of beautiful devojka. There's a high ratio of silicon /botox enhancements here, but this girl was jeans and a t-shirt, not made-up at all, just strolling along while feasting on a slice of veggie pizza. Now in my personal life (that is, unrelated to school or employment) I have walked up to a female stranger exactly twice in my entire life. It's just not something I'm accustomed to doing. But I am a stranger in a strange land and have had quite a run here so, having learned to pay for coffee when it is brought to my table, I finish it quickly and navigate my course through the somewhat crowded square in the wake of this young lady. I'm not at all sure what it is I will do when I catch up to her—I'd been searching for this hard-to-locate bookstore, but I'd just found it before having coffee, yet I think I can pretend I hadn't and ask her for directions to it. She paused by a fountain bench to finish her pizza slice and I caught up with her.  As I approach I hear her humming a tune that I know, but cannot name. I stumbled through my introduction in Serbian (which is a bit better now than a mere stumble) and she smiled at my lack of dialect and replied in a curious accent of English. I tell her I'm looking for Plato (locally, it's a short a-sound; PLAT-oh).  She points in the direction and I acknowledge the landmark, and she tells me precisely where I can find it. I ask her where she's from, because her accent doesn't sound Serbian. She says she grew up in Sarajevo and (some town I don't recall) in Turkey; her family's Serbian-Turkish. How curious, I comment and tell her, of course, that I'm en route to Sarajevo in the coming week. We chat a moment about Sarajevo and I tell her the Serbian joke Mr Bećković told me; she laughs. Ah, that's all I needed, a laugh is a step towards a greater conversation.

So that's when the pigeons took flight around us. That's when one of them shat on my head.

Ewwww, I say and wipe it quickly from my hair and—just as quickly—produce the little bottle of hand sanitizer from my daypack and make a quick clean up as I joke about how I can't very well flirt with a pretty girl with birdshit in my hair. She found that quite funny and commented that most people would have gotten terribly angry and/or embarrassed, neither of which are at all alluring. Humor is attractive, she said. Then I do a soft-shoe shuffle dance to clean my hands and hair and drop the little bottle of sanitizer back in my daypack and ask her if she thinks talent is attractive.

Her answer itself isn't as important as the fact that her family has a house in the mountains south of Sarajevo and, after finishing her visit with grandparents in Beograd this week, she's going back to Sarajevo until August. And that I have her number there.

In addition to merely being infatuated with this lovely lady, I'm incredibly curious to hear the tale of her Serbian-Turkish heritage.

So I suppose I'm grateful to that pigeon. And my general lack of embarrassment when things go horribly wrong. And that even though I get quite angry at a great number of things, my anger here in Serbia has been limited to the boneheads on the news (I've watched BCC World News a few times this past week and seen the boneheads of Israel and the bonesheads of BP and that majorly disgusting piece of excrement disguised as a Dutchman who is in custody in Peru), since my personal anger is in that same checked luggage locker in Heathrow along with my judgment and ideology awaiting my return trip from here.

Pigeon gods work in mysterious ways.

Oh... and Plato is a cool little bookstore

As I came in this evening from taking sunset photos of Sv. Sava's, I found myself humming the tune I heard from her. It took a few minutes but I tracked it down in the great music archive of my head:

And Jane... came... by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear --

So I guess this is where I say, "Sincerely, L. Cohen," and bid you goodnight from Beograd.






~*~